A group of right-wing influencers said they were “victims” of an alleged Russian disinformation campaign after the Department of Justice accused Russia of using high-profile conservative commentators in America to push propaganda ahead of the presidential election in November.
An indictment filed in the Southern District of New York linked six U.S. internet personalities — including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — to a Tennessee-based media company, which, in reality, appears to be a Russian government-backed influence operation.
Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, who are Moscow-based and on the lam, have been charged with conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act in connection with the scheme. They are both employees of RT, a media outlet previously known as Russia Today, that’s funded and controlled by the Russian government.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, RT was sanctioned, dropped by distributors and ultimately forced to cease formal operations across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
In response, its editor-in-chief vowed to create an “entire empire of covert projects,” among them, funneling $10 million into the Tennessee-based company — all of it laundered through foreign shell entities — and then recruiting influencers with established audiences to crank out English-language videos that were “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russian interests.
Fake personas were also created and used to push the propaganda videos, the indictment said.
While the company was not named in the court documents, the details provided suggest it is Tenet Media, which describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”
Since launching in November 2023, the media platform has posted nearly 2,000 videos, which have garnered a whopping 16 million views on just YouTube alone. They often promote conservative talking points, including those on immigration, inflation, and gender, and were more often than not “edited, posted, and directed” by one of the RT employees, according to the indictment.
Tenet’s website lists six influencers who provide content, including Pool, Johnson, Rubin, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen.
In response to the indictment, Pool, the 38-year-old host of Tenet’s podcast series “The Culture War with Tim Pool,” said that he and the other influencers “were deceived and are victims” should the claims raised by the Justice Department prove to be accurate.
“We still do not know what is true as these are only allegations,” Pool said. “Putin is a scumbag.”
Johnson echoed the sentiment in his own post, writing that “we are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment,” emphasizing that “myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.”
He explained that he was approached by a “media startup” a year ago, and that his lawyers negotiated a “standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.”
The U.S. Justice Department did not allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding.